Message identifiers are commonly used to identify messages that are logged within logs, such as error logs. The messages correspond to events. The identifiers are unique and assist in uniquely identifying the information being conveyed within the messages. Message identifiers are employed because the messages themselves may be translated into different languages, or additional information may be added to the messages that make it more difficult to identify the messages.
Message identifiers are commonly used to identify problems that have occurred in computer programs and computer systems, resulting in events being logged in error logs via corresponding messages. In some situations, users can perform searches based on the message identifiers to research the problems. Such searches may be performed in relation to Internet search engines in general, for instance, or in relation to web sites for the computer programs and the computer systems in particular.
Although the message identifiers are useful, they refer to particular messages and thus to particular events. This renders message identifiers ineffective in situations in which identifying a problem is not possible with a single message or a single event. In such situations, multiple messages corresponding to multiple events have to be correlated to actually identify the problem that has occurred. A single message identifier of a single event (i.e., of a single message corresponding to the single event) is unhelpful in these situations because the identifier does not convey the context in which the message was generated.